


Worse Than That

by Elisif



Series: The Thangorodrim Series [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Blood, Extreme Gore, Gen, Torture, Vomit, please please be careful
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-03-20 13:26:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3652005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisif/pseuds/Elisif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fingon rescues Maedhros from Thangorodrim, in all its awful detail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned: I lost track of how many times I teared up writing this. Warnings for extreme gore, blood, torture, vomit… Pretty much everything. I hope to God elves have tetanus shots. Trust me: the amputation scene in this is nasty. I honestly felt sick from writing that part, so please be careful if you can’t take that sort of thing, and skip it if you must (it’s only a tiny portion of this fic in its totality, but the rest is no picnic either). So please be careful.

_He had thought Maitimo was standing on a ledge._

That revelation- the true extent of Morgoth’s cruelty, of what had been done to his friend, hit Fingon like a nail to his chest as Thorondor reached the platform set against the peak of Thangorodrim and for the first time he saw clearly just what his friend had been subjected to.

_He had thought…._

“I thought you were standing on a ledge!” he screamed as he jumped down from Thorondor’s back onto the platform set in the side of the cliff.

“No…” Maitimo said, looking down at himself in abject misery as Fingon frantically searched for a means to reach him.

Even with the knowledge that his friend had been captured and imprisoned, the confirmation the last few minute that he had been exposed and tortured, the image of him in Fingon’s mind had not changed.  Maitimo, who had been renowned for being poised and famously beautiful, who Fingon has on more than one occasion threatened to whack with his own hairbrush if he spent any longer at his dressing table, who had taken the time to debate between robes and necklaces even when living in a lightless field after the world had ended… He had been defined by that very combination of vanity and dignity, and to see him like this- hair a short and matted tangle of unnamed filth, so thin you could see every bone in his skeleton sticking through his skin, coated in cuts and open sores and sunburns and dried blood and muck, stark naked without even the merest suggestion of attempting to cover himself— the very notion that Maitimo simply didn’t seem to _care_ about any of those things was almost more shocking than what had been done to him, Fingon thought, and immediately felt sick to his stomach for having done so. It took him a moment to shake himself back to reality, to remind himself that he was looking at his _friend_ and not transfixed by a horrifying illustration of some unknown abomination in a book his mother had warned him not to read and hidden atop a cupboard, in morbid fascination halted from looking away.

“Are you real?”

Maitimo’s voice was like a strangled croak as Fingon leapt down from Thorondor’s back and scrambled for a means to reach him. Only a few feet to the left of Maitimo’s listless, helplessly dangling feet he found a pile of borders, jumbled together as though they had been purposely shoved out of reach. Heaving, Fingon lifted one into his arms.

“I’m real, Maitimo,” he said, and set it down just below his cousin’s feet, laid another flattened slab of rock on top of it and scrambled upwards to the level of his cousin’s face.

With a small, broken squeak of pain, Maitimo’s hand ghosted over to Fingon and his fingers picked at the embroidery along his coat sleeve, traced the soft silk of his surcoat and felt their way tentatively up his richly clothed shoulder, gasping at the unfamiliar touch of silk and fur against his fingertips. Fingon was suddenly appallingly aware of the rich layers of soft cloth against his skin, felt grotesque and pampered and swaddled to an almost sickening degree. Frantic, he ripped off his furred cloak, at which Maitimo flinched as though he expected to be slapped. He whimpered and tilted his head back with his eyes closed, bracing himself, as Fingon pushed his arm behind his raw back to wrap the cloak around him, but gave a gasp of shock that turned into grateful sobbing and trickles of wet tears down his cheeks when finally he opened his eyes and realised what Fingon was doing.

Fingon swore under his breath as he struggled and failed in the attempt to cover his cousin properly with his trapped arm suspended above his head, eventually admitted defeat and left the cloak draped over his left shoulder and dangling. A pathetic attempt at warmth and modesty he thought, for all his cousin’s gratitude. He grabbed his cousin’s hand and pressed it over his heart in a fist. Squeezing, he felt something pockmarked, misshapen and wrong with those spindly twigs masquerading as fingers; he opened his clenched hand, looked straight down and saw deep, bloodied bite and tooth marks criss-crossing over every inch of Maitimo’s free hand from knuckle to fingertip and his eyes widened in horror.

“I’m sorry,” his cousin sobbed, pulling his hand back and biting down hard into a gash sliding across his bloodied knuckle and throwing his head back against the rock with a muffled scream. “It’s all I’ve got—“

“Shh, it’s alright. You don’t need to apologise. I’m here now. I’ll make it stop hurting. I’ll get you out of here,” he said, barely masking the white-hot fury that was threatening to explode from his chest. Maitimo did not seem to notice; his voice fluttered and trembled like a hesitant, soft-voiced prayer when he asked:

“Really?”

“Really. Let me look at your arm?”

As gently as he possibly could, Fingon skated his fingers up Maitimo’s arm to the rusted, unthinkably tight shackle which pinched the juncture of Maitimo’s wrist in a wealed band of dried scabs and blood, cut mercilessly into the bruised and shredded skin of his wrist. The band itself was chained to a broad-headed nail that had been driven deep into the bare rock of the mountainside. It would not be easy to pull it or break it free, but he would manage it somehow, he thought.

A fat raindrop struck him in the eye, hard enough to sting as he bit his lip trying to decide how best to proceed. Heavy on his cheeks and forehead, others followed. From below, he heard his cousin whimper.

Fingon unsheathed his dagger, brought it upwards and slammed it down hard against the shackle.

The effort accomplished nothing.

Again, he slammed the dagger hard into the side of the manacle, angling upwards. The blade slipped against the wet steel to angle sideways and Fingon’s knuckles scraped open against the rough rock as he repeatedly tried to pick apart the fixings of the chain with the blade point. A distant roaring of thunder sounded; he turned his head and could make out a broad blanket of black-tinged storm-clouds rolling in like a tidal wave across the open ravine towards the exposed and tiny platform where they found themselves, dark and menacing. Honest fury now awakening in him, he wiped his bloodied knuckles against his damp cheek and, tears welling hot in his eyes and fist clenching around the dagger handle to the point of pain, he pounded and slammed the ever duller blade against the gyve. Each blow landed more carelessly than the last until the point of the blade caught in the runic insignia of the shackle and his hand, damp with sweat and rain, slipped and, to his horror, nearly slammed into his cousin’s wrist.

The dagger was now blunted to complete uselessness. He dropped it then and tried shifting his cousin’s wrist upwards within the gyve with his fingertips. It budged the tiniest measure, evoking a cry of pain from its pititful owner trapped below, but the only things released from Morgoth’s trap in that moment were flecks and shreds of dried, black blood that fell from the tight ring of scabs and cuts the manacle so brutally ensnared.

“It’s alright,” he whispered, more for Maitimo than for himself as he glanced upwards at the hellish trap extending above their heads, shifted his efforts from the manacle to the rusted chain and pin that nailed it to the sheer face of the cliff. Desperate, he seized the broad head of the nail with both hands and scrambled his legs up the rough surface of the stone until his feet lay flat against the vertical rockface and his full weight was suspended angled to draw the pin from the stone.

The rusted head of the nail sliced into his palms; he let his weight drop, over and over, wresting his full bodyweight against the chain in the hope of pulling it free until at last the rain and sweat on his palms again proved too much to hang on any longer and he let go and dropped back downwards onto the boulder.

He stared downwards at his hands. Sharp lines of open crimson sliced across them, wet and bleeding, the nail and chain having rendered them a bloodied mess.

“Finno…”

At the pity in Maitimo’s voice, blind fury awoke in Fingon’s chest so white-hot he could barely _think_. He wiped his hands on his tunic and reached forwards to scoop Maitimo up into his soaked arms, taking his weight under the armpit and against his chest as his friend whimpered, glanced downwards his nervously kicking feet.

 “Don’t you _dare_ feel sorry for me,” Fingon said, Maitimo’s breath hot against his cheek as he followed his eyes to glance downwards at his mangled, naked body pressed up against him. “They did worse than that to _all_ of you.”

The filthy mat of Maitimo’s once-glorious hair fell in front of his eyes as he looked downwards at his injuries. It was truly raining, hard and fast and cold on them both now. Maitimo’s eyes traced upwards to his helplessly trapped arm, and Fingon’s followed.

For a moment, they both stared at his trapped hand and wrist, then Maitimo _screamed_ , a wordless cry of desperate, impotent fury wrenched from his throat with alarming strength. He wrenched his head and neck forward and Fingon could see the pitiful twitches of the atrophied muscles in his forearm as he summoned all the muscle he still possessed in an utterly vain effort to move his arm away from the rock even the merest inch, but the arm was still immobilised utterly, dislocated in every joint it contained and stuck fast against the damp and dripping stone.

An awful shudder coursed through him and he fell back against the rocks, rough sobs making his legs twitch and his ribcage shudder, gulps of pain and stammered gasps of tears forcing their way from his throat. Dangling helplessly beneath the trapped bonds of his right arm, he shook so hard that Fingon’s cloak fell from his shoulder and left him fully naked again. Fingon reached forwards to help him, but with another anguished howl of pain, Maitimo’s left arm pushed him away.

His eyes clenched tight for a moment, then with a visible gulp of pain he opened them and strained himself to remain still and meet Fingon’s eyes, biting down on the joint of his index finger in agony as he looked up at his arm and at the precipice above him.

“Just do it then,” he gasped. “Just get it over with…”

His eyes opened wider and he sobbed.

“Kill me Finno…”

“No!”

“Please! Just do it and get it over with, they left me here to die, I can’t take it anymore! _Please_!”

He pushed his cousin back and as though frozen and chained in some unwaking nightmare Fingon watched he struggled and twisted, his legs kicking and hips twisting, helpless and naked and filthy and sobbing openly, covering his eyes with his free hand. Desperate to do something, _anything_ to end this this abject misery, he leapt downwards from the boulder and lifted the fur-lined cloak from the damp ground where it had fallen, brought it upwards and wrapped it over his cousin’s front, tucked it in around his shoulders, propping up his full meagre bodyweight under the armpit and holding the folds of the cloak in place behind his neck. The gesture made him cry even harder.

The rain lashed onwards. Fingon glanced down and made out the silver glint of the now useless dagger he had dropped onto the rocks of the ledge as Maitimo cried against him. And as he cradled Maitimo’s head against his collarbone in his spread fingers as one might support the crown of an infant’s head, murmuring childish little words of solace and comfort, he thought to himself that it was so, so unfair. And the thought was childish and a waste of time and no help at all to Maitimo, but it was so damnably, unthinkably _unfair_. To be holding a friend you’d only moments before braced yourself to kill with your own hands and never see as anything but an unreachable smudge on a cliff-face again and a dead one at that _in your arms_ , to be offered a divine reprieve and have him in your arms and against your heart but no further than that because he was still utterly, utterly trapped, he wasn’t standing on a ledge, Manwe had given them _a divine reprieve_ and Maitimo was still trapped because Morgoth had made him that way and Morgoth had put him there.

Sobbing against Fingon’s chest, Maitimo sniffed.

“Please kill me, Finno.”

“I can’t! I won’t do that to you!”

“No!”

Maitimo lifted his head. Looking up at Fingon, he wiped his cheek with the knuckles of his free hand. Along with the intended tears, some of the dried blood and ash against his knife-sharp cheekbone wiped away, and with a catch in his throat Fingon recognised the familiar smatter of freckles on his cousin’s cheek in that tiny smear of clean The merest, littlest trace of that beloved face that for all the shame in the world it caused him to admit, Fingon could barely make out In the person crying against his heart.

Urgent raindrops slid down the back of Fingon’s neck, made loose strands from his braid stick to his skin. Low and deep, resonating in the high stones of the mountains, thunder crackled. Maitimo opened his eyes.

 “The storms are the worst up here,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to be here for another one. Please, Finno. Just do it quickly. That’s all you can do for me now. Get it over with.”

He swallowed hard.

“Please.”

Fingon gulped.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll do it, I’ll—“

He couldn’t finish the words. A sob bled from his throat and tears slid down his face as he leant in to gave his friend one last long lingering embrace. The catches in his throat and his cousin’s sniffs were the only sounds in the cold deathly stillness of those mountains as he held Maitimo close against his chest, patted his raw back. One last memory of warmth and tenderness before it all ended, ended here, in rain and in cold and in darkness so far from home.

_Criiick, crick._

Fingon swore beneath his breath as he looked up at the chain that so brutally ensnared his friend’s arm. Maitimo’s chain was creaking back and forth in the wind. At this very moment torturing and damning to death his dearest friend and all the while mockingly making a sound as innocuous and repetitive in tone as a rusted garden-gate swinging on unoiled hinges. _Criiick, crick. Criiick, crick._  

_Criiick, crick._ Ensnared within its bonds, his cousin’s hand strained itself, his deathly fingers stretching desperately to bend over far enough to pick at the band around his wrist to no avail.

“Maitimo, I can still free you.”

“What?”

He repositioned the grip of his arm beneath his cousin’s armpit, tried to quell the vile mixture of horror and hope that welled up inside of him. Maitimo sniffed, did not respond, still tearful against Fingon’s shoulder. Fingon pushed his chest back a tad, touched his cousin’s cheek with his fingertips.

“Maitimo, I can free you, do you understand?”

“No…”

“I’m going to—“ _Eru help him._

“What?”

“I can free you, alright? I’ll be _fast_ , I promise—“

Maitimo looked up at his arm.

“No! “

“Only a few more minutes of pain, I _promise_ you. I _promise_ you. On my honour, I _swear_ it will be over, and then I can take you home. Then— there’ll be a nice dry bed waiting for you with clean clothes and warm blankets and medicine for the hurt and we’ll wash your hair and your brothers will be with you, and it will be spring and there will be strawberries and warm bread and fresh milk for you to drink, alright?”

A desperate broken sound slipped from his throat, and then he turned his head away. Again the fingers of his bound hand flexed, and Fingon forced himself to choke down the nausea brewing in his throat.

It was raining harder now, as though pacing itself with Maitimo’s tears.

_Look strong for him_ , Fingon told himself. _Act like you know what you’re doing, no matter how much you don’t. Don’t let him know you wish you could run away to your mother’s arms and make someone else do this while you cover your eyes and ears. You owe it to him. He has no choice but to trust you._

Fingon bit down on his lip, swallowed hard and gently traced his fingers up Maitimo’s arm to the ragged skin of his ensnared wrist, the site of the shackle so bruised and shredded with cuts he barely dared touch it.

_You’ll be doing far worse than touching it in a few seconds._

With the tips of his fingers, Fingon traced the green and blue mottled skin just below the shackle, searching for the narrow join between the bones of his arm and hand, obscured by the swollen bruises that painted his skin in such grotesque shades.

Assured by his silence that he hadn’t hurt Maitimo he continued—

_Findekano Nolofinwion, you fucking idiot. How do you ever expect to do this? How do you ever expect to cause and carry on causing him the worst pain a person can ever experience if you can’t even bear to touch a few bruises?_

Fingon gulped, and dug his fingers into Maitimo’s wrist, making him gasp with pain. A few quick squeezes, and his fingers located the thin gap between the bones, small but mercifully elongated the tiniest bit by his suspension. _Wide enough for a knife to pass through,_ he thought.

Fingon’s sash was yellow silk, embroidered with a pattern of bluebirds by his beloved sister-in-law lost to the ice, the finest piece of clothing he had left from Aman. With trembling fingers, he undid the knot that secured it around his waist, looped it between his hands and pulled it tight between them. The gesture made Maitimo cry out, but Findekano said nothing. What was he even supposed to say? “ _I’m not going to hurt you?”_

_“Please forgive me, Nelyo.”_

He barely whispered the words as he brought the sash up to his cousin’s forearm, looped it behind his arm and tied it into a knot. Then he wrapped the fold around his sheathed, blunted dagger and began to twist it as a pivot, compressing Maitimo’s forearm.

He groaned; beads of sweat plastered his forehead and he whimpered.

“It will be over soon,” Findekano said. With a last sharp twist, he finished the tourniquet, then tucked the wrapped dagger within the folds to prevent it from unravelling, praying it would hold.

He leapt down from the boulder, grabbed his pack from where he had flung it aside. Inside, he found his other dagger, and a wineskin of water, both of which he brought back up with him, sticking the dagger in his pocket before Maitimo could see it.

“Do you want some water…first?” he asked, trembling.

Maitimo nodded; gently, Fingon uncorked the wine-skin and passed it firmly into Maitimo’s shaking fingers, gave them a firm squeeze, helped him to clutch a fold of the leather and hold the container to his bleeding lips. Water spilt down his neck and cheeks as he drank with unsteady fingers.

Quickly checking that his cousin was distracted, he tested the dagger in a slight cut through his breeches against his thigh, a drop of blood pooling through the rip in the fabric, mercifully sharp.

With a silent prayer, Fingon leapt upwards. He seized his cousin under the armpit and pulled him up the rockface by sheer force, knocking the waterskin out of his hand and bringing the knife up to his wrist.

“FINNO!” Maitimo screamed, struggling and against the rockface and kicking.

_Now_ , Fingon told himself and brought the dagger up—

His hand stopped a few inches short of the flesh.

Findekano swore to himself, foul and furious as the rain bled down his cheeks and Maitimo squirmed in his grasp. It was so damnably stupid, speed was the only thing in the world he could offer Maitimo right now, and he had _failed_ , _he couldn’t do this, by delaying he had hurt him_ more _, he couldn’t do this, he had to distract him somehow, but what could he possibly say, he couldn’t do this—_

“Maitimo,” he stammered, testing the angle of the dagger in his unpracticed hand. _For god’s sake get it right this time_.  “Do you- do you remember that thing you used to do when I was a child? Where you would tell me to list my favourite books or toys…”

_So you could distract me and then rip a stocking off of a scraped knee or clean a cut with rubbing alcohol._

“Tell me things that you want. List them for me. When I get home, I want a hot bath and some fresh bread, what do you want?”

Maitimo sobbed, and his head fall back against the rocks.

“I just want it to stop hurting, I don’t know…”

He cried out and the deathly white fingers of his bound hand flexed.

“Food. Something to eat. Anything but _this_. I don’t care anymore—“

Taking that pitiful request as all the permission he would ever get, Findekano drew the blade across his cousin’s wrist. Hard and sharp, the cut ripped open a straight line of red, and droplets of blood began to dribble down Maitimo’s arm. His cousin screamed, and the sound lingered into a high-pitched of shriek of agony as he turned his head. Whispering a prayer to himself and half-closing his eyes as Maitimo wailed in protest, desperately pleaded for a reprieve as he tried to struggle free, Findekano brought the knife back up, pivoted the point of the blade against the rock and with the pressure of his other hand against the handle, slammed it down _hard_ into the narrow crook of Maitimo’s wrist.

Maitimo’s scream was fit to shake the very walls of the mountains as blood shot from his arm, squirted into Findekano’s face with such force he swallowed a mouthful, jerked his head back and choked. Maitimo wailed in agony and Findekano was forced to lean over and spit out a mouthful of blood down his front, gagging, before searching through the blinding haze of blood, sweat, rain and tears to realign the dagger and continue as his cousin shrieked onwards below him. He couldn’t see; he had to use his hand to feel up his cousin’s arm and find the cut. The touch of the raw exposed flesh and the touch of slippery bone beneath it sent another rush of vomit into his throat that he only barely managed to choke back downwards.

A wild rush of adrenalin coursed through him, and in a few brief seconds of explosive, unthinkable energy, five times he pivoted the blade back into Maitimo’s open wrist, slamming down into narrow strip of flesh with all the pressure his arm and fist could muster. Maitimo screamed until his voice broke like glass against rock, shaking as he fell back against the rocks in utter, utter agony. When Findekano finally stopped for the briefest instant, trembling with adrenalin and shock, the screams had become gasps, but when he glanced down, his cousin’s mouth still open and scraping out in the echo of a scream he no longer had the strength to muster, his throat raw as the iron ensnaring his wrist.

Findekano wiped the tears from his eyes and made to pull the dagger free of the flesh and repeat the pivoting motion, blood pouring down his fingers and wrists. It wouldn’t budge, stuck fast in the striated muscles. Panicking, Findekano tried to tug it free with both hands; the sharp pain of that movement after those few seconds of blissful reprieve prompted a final, sudden scream, and then Maitimo fell limp against his chest.

He looked down, fearing the worst as he spat out another mouthful of blood. In the tightness of his hold, his cousin had fallen unconsciously forwards with his knuckles still in his mouth where he had been biting down on them, blood running down his clenched fingers as his head drooped. Knowing he probably had only seconds before Maitimo regained consciousness, Findekano braced himself and began to saw through the butchered flesh, tearing the blade back and forth as fast as he possibly could.

He kept his eyes closed; he did not see the moment when the hand and beleaguered wrist finally parted, only felt the slip of Maitimo hollow, piteous weight as he fell forwards into his arms.

Rain. Just rain.

The sudden silence roared in Fingon’s ears like a damned river released to the earth, like ice hitting the sea. No more screams, no more crunching of flesh, just gentle, pouring rain, and the race of his heart and pulse of blood and nerve sounding in his throat and cheekbones, his hand still in place with the dagger-blade— flat against the rock beneath his cousin’s lifeless, severed hand.

The realisation hit him, then he dropped the dagger, doubled over, and retched onto the rocks, tears running down his face as he gagged and spat up blood, over and over, his chest heaving. He allowed himself this one brief moment to weep in shock and horror and self-hatred, before wiping the blood and sweat from his face, bending Maitimo’s bleeding and mutilated arm over his shoulder and turning back to his cousin and what he had done.

Amidst the unending black and indigo of the driving storm and hellish rocks, there was a flash of cold brightness as the lightning turned the pouring rain running down Maitimo’s bleached, deathly cheeks to streaks of molten silver, Telperion’s shadow for the briefest moment visible amidst the horror. His head fell backwards; strands of his soaked, filthy hair clung to his forehead, and as his neck lolled further against Fingon, streaks of rain tumbled down the mess of snot, blood and tears in a wash of deathly, silent cold, mingling with the ash and muck.

Alone in the deathly solitude of the storm, Fingon held him. Cold rain poured down his forehead and into his eyes; over and over, he wiped it off with the back of his free hand as he waited for Maitimo to awaken or die, whichever came first.

“ _Please_ …”

Shaking, his fingers peeled a strand of bloodied hair back from his cheek; Maitimo’s lips parted in a moan of pain and with the faintest flicker of hope, Fingon held his hand over his eyes to keep out the rain running down into them, hand slippery with blood.

“Russo, wake up. _Please_. It’s over. I promise you.”

His eyes flickered open; for an instant, his lips parted and with the merest smile, Fingon brushed a smear of blood from them with his fingers. Maitimo’s lips moved to speak, but then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell limp against his cousin again, groaning.

“It’s alright,” Fingon said, patting his slippery, naked back as he clutched his cousin to himself. “Shh, it’s alright…”

Maitimo slipped further down against Fingon’s chest; he struggled to haul him fractionally more upright, trying to gain a handhold against his buttocks, but he was so piteously thin there was nothing to hold onto. In the end, his fingers dug into and pulled him upright by the hollow below his ribcage, the ridges and patches of rough scar tissue at its base finally providing traction against the bloodied mess of his back so he did not drop him as he moved.

But at the sudden shift upwards, his butchered right arm slipped from its precariously upright position tilted against and over Fingon’s shoulder to fall limply downwards at his side, and at that he screamed so loudly Fingon almost dropped him.

 “Pull it back up, pull it _back up_ …”

Frantic, Fingon grabbed his arm and yanked it back up over his shoulder, his left arm holding it partially upright and extended and away from him. Again, Maitimo screamed, tortured shrieks fit to shake the walls of the mountains, until finally he collapsed ad fell forwards against Fingon again, biting down on his fist as Fingon struggled to hold him upright by his ribs in one hand and keep his butchered, slippery forearm outstretched in the other.

For a few seconds then, he sobbed, dry heaves of desperate, unimaginable pain against Fingon’s shoulder.

“Shh, shh, it’s alright—“ he said. “You’re free now, you’ll be alright—“

Maitimo began to scream, the same terrified sound over and over, and to his horror Fingon noticed his cousin was staring straight at his mutilated fore-arm, that he now fully realised what had just been done to him. _I should have turned his head away,_ he thought to himself. _I shouldn’t have let him see, I should have covered his eyes._

Fingon’s arm was cramping now; his wrist ached and his hand slipped as it struggled to hold Maitimo’s fore-arm outstretched. There was no way he could maintain the awkward position without dropping him.

Fingon swallowed hard.

“Russandol,” he said.

Maitimo only sobbed harder, burying his face in Fingon’s shoulder. Struggling to maintain his grip on his bloody forearm, Fingon gritted his teeth.

“Russandol, I need both of my hands to keep holding you, alright? I’m going to let your arm down as gently as I possibly can, over my back, but I can’t keep holding it like this. I’m sorry.”

He whimpered.

“It’s only for a few seconds, I promise you.”

As gently as he possibly could, Fingon leaned forward against him and let Maitimo’s arm fall over his neck and back, bending at the shoulder and elbow at last into the unfamiliar position, his bleached trembles of pain turning into drawn, voiceless screams, beyond even tears, as his arm settled into position. The blood from his arm dripped down warm and mingled with cold sweat and rainwater drenching Fingon’s back.

 “Shh, shhh…”

This time it was Maitimo’s turn to be sick. With a dreadful shudder of his chest and shoulders, he retched then, vomited down Fingon’s back, thin liquid soaking into Fingon’s sweaty shirt and splashing against his mud-spattered legs and boots. Another heave and his head tilted; with sudden realisation Fingon jerked his maimed arm away by the shoulder and held it in another awkward position off of his back.

The gag turned into another scream, and Maitimo kicked his knees upward into Fingon’s stomach, hard.

“ _Please…”_ he gasped. “Just for the love of god stop moving my sho-houlllder, just just _stop touching it_!”

He howled as he fell forwards, beating his fist against Fingon’s chest and sobbing in dry, heaving breaths.

“I hate you,” he stammered, weakly pounding his fist against Fingon’s collarbone. “I h-h-ate you…”

Fingon choked back tears, patted his cousin’s slippery naked back as gently as he could, sick with guilt.

“Please forgive me Nelyo,” he said, leaning in against his friend’s shoulder, pulling him further upright with both arms below his ribcage now. “I’m sorry I touched your shoulder like that, alright? I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t let you be sick on your arm, alright? We need to keep it clean, then when we get home the healers can fix it, they’ll know what to do for you. They’ll know how to help…”

Maitimo groaned. His eyes rolled back in his head and once more, he went limp, his face a grotesque mess of snot and blood, vomit and tears.

“There, there,” he said, embracing Maitimo as tightly as he dared as turned his head to search for Thorondor amidst the rain-lashed abyss beyond, wiped the rain from his eyes as he made ready to step back down from the rock at last. “There, there, shhh. Almost home now. You’re free now, hush…”

For all his weighing about as much as a dead bird, Maitimo was still the taller of the two of them, and unconscious, his knees jolted and bumped against Fingon’s calves as he moved backwards on the boulder. Still holding Maitimo up by clutching him beneath his protruding ribcage, his legs swaying— like a child lifting a cat, he thought to himself—at long last, Fingon leapt downwards onto the ledge with his cousin held in his arms. Finally, he was able to pick him up properly, scoop his naked, unconscious cousin up into his arms like a child, one arm under his legs and the other supporting his back, the bleeding stump of his right arm tucked up against Fingon’s stomach. Warm blood trickled through his blouse as the butchered stump pressed through the thin cloth against his navel.

His cousin’s head fell unsupported from his arms, his eyes closed, and his limp remaining fingertips traced against the rocks as Fingon carried him to the rim of the ledge.

“Look, Thorondor is here now. He’ll take us home, yes?”

Maitiimo did not answer. Fingon gave a soft nod to the great eagle as he hovered by the side of the cliff; crushing the horrible images that flitted through his mind of him dropping his cousin in the process, he straddled the golden bony expanse of Thorondor’s back and adjusted his legs. As he cradled his cousin in his arms the great eagle soared soundless into the unending skies, left Maitimo’s wretched prison and the depths of Angband far behind, and Fingon felt the cold wind in the cracks between the patches of dried blood on his cheeks.

Maitimo shuddered in his arms; remembering himself, Fingon tore off his shirt, wrapped it tight around the bleeding, butchered stump of his friend’s arm, rendering the grey cloth a lump of soaked, scarlet gore within seconds. He propped the arm up against his collarbone to keep it elevated, balanced his cousin’s unsupported head against his thigh, then scrambled for his cloak.

_Idiot_ , he thought to himself as he realised he had forgotten it entirely, left it behind where it had presumably been dropped onto the ledge. _The thing was damned polar-bear fur! Now how exactly are you supposed to keep him warm?_

Careful not to jolt Maitimo, Fingon tugged off his surcoat. The material was thin, more embroidery than base material, but it would have to do.

“There there,” he said, his fingers shaking as he wrapped it around his cousin’s limp body, tucked and held the material together around his neck. “You liked it so much before up there, well now it’s yours to keep, yes?”

Maitimo only groaned, squirmed in his embrace. Fingon leant down and planted a soft kiss against his forehead as he cradled him, and tears rolled down his face onto his cousin’s filthy cheeks.

“Shh, shh…”

He was singing a lullaby as Thorondor soared higher and higher and breathless flew free from the filthy muck that was the air of Angband. High above the battle-scarred earth he soared, and gently glided from the darkness into a sky that was pale ice-blue and dotted with the soft stars of departing darkness and warm, approaching morning. Below them, the plains of Beleriand spread out green and gentle, the colour alone sending the echo of greenery into Fingon’s memories and a ghost of running water to his fingertips.

Thorondor flew onwards, and Fingon cradled his friend’s bloody head against his collarbone in his spread fingers. With a whimper, Maitimo’s legs shifted and he managed to curl up against Fingon’s chest so far as his atrophied muscles would allow so the surcoat truly shielded his back from the cold wind in Fingon’s embrace, the rush of cold air that accompanied every movement of Thonrondor’s wings.

A crack opened in the clouds; Fingon rejoiced at the sun, but Maitimo whimpered and squirmed, rolled over onto his back in Fingon’s arms and with the movement, the surcoat came apart, allowing the light to shine down his front for the first time.

For the first time, in the absence of the darkness and the rain and with time to spare, Fingon could see the true horror of Maitimo’s injuries and at the sight he was nearly sick again. The entire front of his body was from head to toe was sunburned crimson and ragged; you could actually make out the lines running down his sides where Arien’s burning light had ceased and scrapes from the rock had overtaken them in the prime position of torturing his skin. Whiplines and scored burns marked every inch of his skin, and his back was a seeping mess of infection, leaking pus and blood into Fingon’s arms. His feet were bent into permanent arches, his right leg badly twisted from an old breakage, to say nothing of the dislocation of his shoulder, and he had wet himself from the pain; Fingon toyed with the idea of mopping up the mess, trying to give his cousin back even the merest scrap of dignity, but decided to prioritise keeping the precious surcoat dry. Wrapped securely back in the thin cloth his cousin’s hip-bones protruded sharply enough to keep the blood-soaked cloth off of his groin as Fingon cradled him, the blood from his arm dribbling down from his collarbone and shoulder to his stomach.

“Shh, shhh…”

Waveringly his lips parted and another groan escaped them. Fingon held him still tighter.

“Finn…”

“Hush Russo, you’re safe now,” he said, pulling a strand of hair back from his face. “Angband is behind us. Can you feel the wind on your face?”

He moaned, struggled against him, his hips shaking.

“Hurts, hurts…”

“Hush now. It’s alright. You’re safe now.”

With a corner of his tunic Fingon attempted to mop some of the blood and tears from his face, staining the yellow silk red. Maitimo tilted his head back, and his lips parted.

“Are those….”

He squirmed, tried and failed to lift his head. The tendons in his neck pulled taut, then he fell backwards and said:

“No they can’t be.”

“What, Maitimo?”

 “For a second there… I thought those were the stars.”

A smile ghosted over Fingon’s face, and tears ran down his cheeks.

“Those _are_ the stars. You’re free now, Maitimo. It’s over. Those are the stars you’re seeing, because you’re in my arms and I’m taking you home.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

It had been a New Year’s Morning in Tirion when the exchange took place. Theirs was society based on gift-giving, one where tributes in the forms of works of beauty were required to cement loyalties, where status was indicated by the sheer lavishness with which one could give, and the highest-ranking man was the one who could rid himself of the grandest work of art. Feanor had disrupted this pattern irreparably in that even the simplest trinket shaped by his hands utterly eclipsed anything that could be offered in return, rendering the entire gift economy effectively pointless. Jokes about the effects of Feanor’s existence on Tirion inflation aside, these ceremonies remained the mortar of Valinorian society and continued, and few were grander than that held in the Royal Palace on New Year’s Morning, when King Finwe and his rivalrous brood of children attempted to outdo one another in gifted splendour.

The exchange, held over endlessly replenished trays of little pastries flecked with pistachios and sugar, bowls of rose petals, candied nuts and tiny cups of strong-brewed coffee, lasted hours. Bolts of cloth that shimmered like rainbows emerged from robe sleeves and packages and fell like shadows across the garden tables; strings of pearls so long they gathered in roped piles draped themselves luxuriantly over the edges of chairs; by morning’s end, illuminated books of poetry lay piled haphazardly atop bejewelled circlets, framed mirrors, engraved daggers, jewelled mechanical toys and silver pens. Every gift was accompanied by obligatory refusal, insistence and eventually passed around for admiration between the jewelled and perfumed fingers of Tirion’s royalty; behind the façade of admiration, every gift was scrutinised for political undertones, quietly judged and duly remembered.

Fingon hated it. Finwe’s small army of grandchildren were required to attend these functions from birth, and once weaned, expected to sit still and observe and learn the tactics of court gift-giving diplomacy from their elders for several hours. He and Irisse usually passed these hot, dreaded hours making faces behind the adult’s backs and kicking each other’s feet until Aunty Lalwen shushed them with a fierce glare or Arco’s nurse made them stop. Irisse could sometimes escape the proceedings by offering to take care of whichever one of the babies was currently screaming because she was a girl, but Fingon was a firstborn and his father’s pride and glory. Even if he dozed off, his father would surely interrogate him about the ceremony later to ensure he had paid attention.

The ceremony droned on and on; Fingon’s robes were full of uncomfortable seams and stiflingly hot. Longingly, he thought about his new puppy in the palace kennels, Wolfie, a gift from the litter of Findis’ prized greyhound he had been given that morning. She was fast as the wind and beautiful and he’d only be allowed to play with her again when the gift exchange had reached its end. When Uncle Arafinwe presented Finwe  with a poem written in his honour performed by a master Telerin singer, recounting a bloody skirmish on the Great Journey accompanied by flute and viol, it all became too much. Fingon’s backside ached, he squirmed, and finally he sought to entertain himself by sticking his fingers in his ears and pulling a face at Irisse, who kicked her feet and giggled, clapping her hands to her mouth. Too loudly.

_“Findekano!”_

His aunt shot him a stern look; the singer fell silent, and all the adults in turn looked at him as he squirmed uncomfortably in his seat under the burn of their gaze. He saw Feanor turn to face his father, teasing for a response.

“I apologise for my son’s misbehaviour,” his father said, settling back in his chair and turning to his brothers, resting a weary hand on his temple. “He’ll receive a lesson from me later today. Fourteen is a trying age as I’m sure you well know, Feanaro. For shame, Findekano.”

Feanor rose forwards in his chair, his elegant fingers restlessly drumming on the side of his cup of wine as he turned to face his brother. His words were cut like silver, sharp and biting.

“Would you truly begrudge the lad for being so bored, half-brother?”

His father rolled his eyes, readying himself. Feanor continued.

“I seem to recall,” he said, shuffling further forwards in his chair, “That when my own sons were young, they participated themselves by offering up their own crafts and gifts to their elders. Surely your own firstborn would be better off learning the art of gifting diplomacy like that than by sitting by in such wretched boredom, brother?”

Fingon’s father’s lips pursed tight.

“Come here, Findekano,” said Feanor. Finno glanced at his father, who nodded with a roll of his eyes; he jumped down from his chair, ran over to Feanor’s side and stood on tiptoes with his hands tightly gripping the cane arm-rest of Feanor’s chair in eagerness as his uncle reached into his chest of miracles. He withdrew a small silk package and laid it in Fingon’s arms.

Finno pulled back the blue silk wrappings. It was a dagger sheathed in leather; sharp as a razor and beautifully engraved with a trellis of vines and leaves and Feanaro’s sigil engraved at the centre of the blade. Even at his age, Fingon could tell it was something very special indeed.

He held his gift in his arms the way Irisse did her dolls in admiration; he heard his aunts and grandmother gasp and he beamed with pride. _A blade like that for a child of fourteen_! he heard someone say.

“Findekano, what do you say to your uncle?”

“Thank you very much, Uncle Feanaro. I will treasure it,” he said in his most princely voice. He shot a glance over at Maitimo, seated on the other side of the circle in his royal finery and smiling. “But…” he said, jumping a little from foot to foot as restlessness set in, “I have nothing to give you in return!”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to repay me someday,” said his uncle, chuckling. “Now,” he added, lifting up his gift-chest into his lap and looking across at his half-brother and sisters-in-law, “shall we continue?”

 

...

 

Later that night, Nolofinwe summoned Findekano to his study, damp and rosy-cheeked from his evening bath, his hair in tight little night-braids formed by his nurse.

His father was seated at his desk, running his fingers in and out of the base of a candle-flame. Fingon loved that trick; it always frightened Amme, even though she knew nothing was wrong. Aunty Lalwen said his father did it when he was nervous.

The candle flickered.

“Do you know why your uncle gave you that knife, Finno?”

Fingon stammered, than quietly said:

“To appear generous.”

“And?”

“It has his seal on the sheath and the blade. That when I look at it I might remember that a debt is due to him.”

“Very good, Finno,” he said, and his mouth broke into a smile. Fingon ran forwards and jumped into his father’s lap, nestled up against his arm. His father smiled, and then he held the knife up to the candlelight for both of them to see. Fingon looked up at him, rocking back and forth.

“Does that make it a bad thing then? A debt, atar?”

“Well,” he said. “Your uncle will have has ulterior motives, because he’s your uncle, but any blade of his making is a treasure to cherish for life.”

“It’s his best then?” he said eagerly, bouncing up and down and squirming.

“No, child,” said his father. “Sit still Findekano, before you fall off of or bruise one of my ribs! No Finno, he probably just made it testing to see if the forge is hot enough. I doubt he ever gave it a second thought” he said, laughing.  “But a blade made by Feanor himself is something almost no one has, and worth about as much as a palace. You must treasure it.”

Fignon snuggled up against his father’s chest and wrapped his arms around his neck.

“I will, Atar.”

 

...

 

The pines on Mithrim’s lakeshore sprawled like waiting shadows. Black as tar, they yawned and twisted their around the edges of the great lake like iron pipes; above them, the moon shone bronze with the smoke and flames of the iron fortress beyond the horizon. By day, this landscape was one of soft mists and warm earth; by night it was a fortress of the shadows, a stark reminder of the strangeness of this wide new world and the creatures it sheltered.

Inside however, was a picture of comfort. Nolofinwe had given Lalwende use of the finished bedchamber to give her grand-niece a bath and for a few brief hours, the darkness had been forgotten in a whirl of soap-bubbles and child’s laughter. Lalwende had hummed lullabies as she worked, bathing the child, towelling her off and styling her hair into night-braids, letting down the hem of her night-dress to accommodate the new inches of height she seemed to have grown in a week. Now it was Itarille’s to sit on the bed with her hands clasped in her lap and feet kicking as Lalwende saw to her own tresses, dried and meticulously combed her hair while kneeling on the floor using the oily surface of the bathtub as a looking-glass.

Lalwende tilted her head to its side, ran her fingers through her loose, combed tresses; satisfied, she took a small brush from her dressing-chest and began to meticulously clean her set of combs in soft little swipes. Itarille stood up from the bed and stood over her, her arms folded.

“Now, Itarille,” she said, the corners of her lips curving upwards as she held the comb out to her niece, “Can you tell me why it is that you must never wash a bone comb with water, only brushes?”

“Bone cracks if it gets wet,” said Itarille proudly, leaning over her aunt’s shoulder, “and cracks trap your hair.”

“Very good dear,” she said. “And believe me, you don’t want to know how that feels! Now, you try.”

There was a muffled knock at the door. Knelt over the cloth on the rushes, aunt and niece lifted their heads in unison as the knocks continued.

“My lady? My lady!”

The corners or Itarille’s mouth twisted as she looked at her aunt; Lalwende instantly set down the combs and leapt up from the rushes, snatching her robe from where it lay across the bed and tugging it over her arms as she rushed to tug the door open. Itarille trailed uncertainly at her heels.

Holding her robe shut with her arm, she opened the thick pine door a crack.

“Lasswelwe?” she said, recognising the weary night-guard and close family friend. “It’s the middle of the night-“

He ran his fingers through his hair.

“I don’t know what to make of this, Princess” he said, “but one of Manwe’s eagles is circling the camp.”

Her heart shot into her throat.

“What for? A curse? A rebirth?”

“In faith, I do not know. Orwere spotted it first, and then-“

Lalwende did not allow him to finish. She tugged a rough woollen blanket off of the bed, wrapped it snugly around Itarille’s shoulders and then swung the child securely onto her hip.

“Where is my brother?” she said, softly tugging the door shut behind her.

“He went ahead to treaty or whatever else must be done… Irime, you should probably put shoes on, it is winter…”

She ignored him. Firmly, she strode down the hallway and stepped out of the hall into the freezing night, the wind and the rush of the crowds of people spilling out of the tents and cabins along the lakeshore roaring in her ears. Most were in nightclothes, like her barefooted; some were pointing to the arc of stars in the blood-dark sky where the eagle had been sighted, an exodus pouring out of the encampment as though swept along by the wind of approaching spring.

“Aunty, what’s going on?” said Itarille, putting her fingers in her mouth as she looked nervously around at the rush of voices swirling around them and people pushing past as they stood in the doorway.

“I don’t know, sweetheart, I don’t know,” she said. “We’re just looking going to go look for your grandfather, alright?”

Itarille slipped against Lalwende’s hip; the child was mercifully gaining weight now that the ice was behind them, but growing ever more burdensome to carry as a result. Lalwende set her down, grabbed her small hand and together the two of them rushed ahead into the crowd.

She quickly regretted ignoring Lasselwe’s suggestion as the freezing pine needles began to stab into her unprotected feet. Wincing, she paused to lift up Itarille and spare her such things, but at the confusion on Itarille’s face when she asked if her feet hurt, she remembered and guilt stung at her heart. Already, the survivors were calling the princess “little silver-foot”, and Lalwen wished with all her heart it was for her love of dancing and not for the ridged frostbite scars that criss-crossed her feet they had noticed far too late.

Someone pushed past her and Lalwen heard the word “riders” on their whispered lips.

 _Riders._ She hardly dared to pray…

There was a rush of cold air and Lalwende along with all those around her fell to the ground as the great eagle swept overhead and landed just beyond the crowds ahead of them with a muffled thump. Tenuously, she lifted her head, her arm clasped tight over her niece’s back; she heard shouts, someone crying out in pain, the voice of her brother, though she could not make out what he said…

The crowds were too thick, swarming forwards; she struggled vainly on her tiptoes to see above the sea of heads clustered around the eagle, tugged on Itarille’s hand as she desperately tried to break through the wall of people swarmed in front of her.

“Findarato!”

Her nephew was walking away from the inner circle, his head buried in his hands and shaking. Lalwende grabbed his wrist and pulled him sharply aside from the crowd.

“For goodness’ sake tell me what is going on! Who are the riders? Good news or bad—“

Findarato looked up and the light was gone from his eyes. The sheer, blank horror they contained stopped the breath in her lungs. His eyes flickered from his aunt to Itarille’s tight little handhold at her side, then back up again, hands over his mouth as though trying not to be sick and hardly daring to speak.

“Findarato?” she dared to stammer.

“Findekano,” he said quietly, staring at the earth. Raising his head, he quietly said: “He’s alive, but… I think what he’s holding in his arms might be Maitimo.”

“Itarille,” she said, her fingers tightening into a death-grip around her niece’s, “go back to the house.”

“What aunty?”

She knelt down, laid her hands firmly on Itarille’s shoulders.

“Go back to the house _now_ ,” she said, her tone icy enough to freeze blood, “go up to your grandfather’s room and you stay up there until once of us comes to get you, yes? Run and _don’t look back for anything_. Go!”

She snatched the blanket from her niece’s shoulders, gave her a firm push and watched as she sprinted back to the encampment on her unfeeling feet. She gathered up the blanket into her arms, and at Findarato’s stern shouted command the crowd ahead of them spilled apart.

She stood frozen as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Standing dwarfed at the great eagle’s side in a small lantern-lit clearing in the crowd was her brother, holding…

She felt the blood drain from her face. It looked like a bundle of brown, bloody twigs. Frozen in place it took her a few seconds to it discern a head, limbs, a torso…

“Nolo, for goodness’ sake cover him, all these people…”

Lalwen sprinted towards her brother, shielded her nephew from the view of the crowd with her back. She tried her hardest to keep her eyes focussed on his face for modesty’s sake; it was so bloody and swollen with sunburns and bruises she could barely make out his eyes. At the slightest touch of her hand against his cheek, her nephew jerked his head away from her touch and crushed it sobbing his face into Nolo’s chest, grasping at a fistful of her brother’s shirt with raw, bloody fingers and crying out in pain and terror as the unfamiliar light of all the lanterns poured down upon his mangled body. It was only then that Lalwen noticed the bleeding, butchered wreck of his right arm and sheer panic overtook shock and revulsion enough for her to come to her senses.

Like two parents fussing over a infant and juggling its passage from one set of arms to another, Nolofinwe balanced Maitimo’s legs over his arm and Lalwende pulled her nephew’s mangled, bloody torso upright enough to drape and tuck Itarille’s blanket around him as he cried out in pain, the tight wrap of the blanket restraining his pathetic struggles to break free. He screamed as Nolofinwe lifted him up against his chest to secure his grip, and a groan bled from his throat as Nolofinwe began firmly striding forwards through the crowd, the thin, bloody bundle of what was once his nephew clutched tight in his arms.

“It’s alright,” said Lalwende, guiding her brother’s passage slowly through the crowd past the lanterns, walking backwards to shield her nephew further from view with her back. “Hush child—“

“Finno,” he gasped, legs kicking weakly, ”Where is _Finno_ …”

“He’s right here, Nelyafinwe, he’s right here—“

She had not even noticed Findekano walking alongside his father until he squeezed his way between her and her brother and grabbed his cousin’s hand, lifted his fingers to his lips in a bloody handhold and kissed them.

“Shh, it’s alright Maitimo, I’m right here, just like I said I would be, alright? My father’s carrying you, back to the house, now we can finally take care of you properly, we can make the pain stop…”

Lalwende stood by in shock as she beheld her- other- nephew. His tunic, his hands, his _face_ were soaked in blood; even his braids were clotted with lumps of dried, congealing gore, and her mouth dropped open in shock as she watched him tenderly fuss over his friend, lean over to part his ragged hair and kiss his forehead.

The awkward party of four continued, rushing so fast as they dared as the crowd parted ahead of them. The lanterns followed. Without warning, Maitimo’s groans turned into a sudden shriek of pain, and he gasped and choked, fighting for air. Nolofinwe rocked him upwards in his arms and tucked in his legs against his chest, so he could splutter over his uncle’s shoulder while Nolofinwe held his back and patted it like a child, his legs dangling down from the secure wrap of the thread-bare blanket.

Another gasp of pain, a hollow sob beyond even tears as his head collapsed against Nolofinwe’s shoulder. Lalwende’s eyes darted from her nephew’s pitiful state back to her brother.

“Where are we taking him?” she asked, amid further groaning.

“Bathhouse,” he said. “It was just used, it’s still heated.”

He turned sternly to the shocked crowds around him, most of them with their hands clasped over their mouths in disgust.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Awaken the healers!”

The crowd scrambled and the small family group rushed ahead to bath-house where they laid out what was left of Nelyafinwe under a pile of blankets, his cousin keeping tender vigil at his all-but-dying side as they sprinted for help.

 

...

 

 

For what felt like the eternity to follow, Fingolfin, Lalwende and Findekano remained seated on a bench in the hall outside the bathhouse in silence, fingers clutched together in anxious sweating palms, their eyes bloodshot from shock, and, in Fingon’s case, lack of sleep. Lalwen’s head lolled uncomfortably against the hard, hard wood of the wall, trying vainly to rest her neck in comfort. A curse was on her lips at the discomfort until she remembered what Findekano had told them of Maitimo’s torture and bit her tongue at such a vain and shameless thought. How could anyone _do_ such a thing to a human being? Discard them like a piece of garbage, leave them like that, not even grant them the mercy of a sudden death…

The scene was so reminiscent of that outside a birthing chamber it was almost laughable, Lalwende thought to herself— the closed door, occasional moans from within, weary healers racing in and out of the door for hot water and linens, the huddled family leaping up every time they did only to be swiftly informed “no change” and little more than that. Cauterising the arm, they had mentioned. Stitches, he would need hundreds of them. Sunburns, dehydration, starvation… The lead healer had described it as being asked to treat every injury and condition she knew of simultaneously. Lalwende said a prayer to herself in silence so her brother would not hear, something she had not done in years and laid her arm around Findekano’s shoulder.

Finally, a weary looking healer stepped out from behind the door, her hands in her lap. Fingon leapt to his feet.

“He’s alright,” she said firmly, as Nolofinwe rose up and steadied his son from behind. “For the moment he’s stable, at least a little bit. We got an IV into his chest so he’s finally getting fluids…”

Nolofinwe drew a deep breath.

“Than what’s the bad news,” he said.

The healer sighed.

“His hair,” she said quietly. “It’s so crawling with lice it’s a health-hazard, and too matted to get a comb through in ten years. There’s nothing we can do except to sha- cut it off entirely. I’m sorry.”

The silence ached in Lalwende’s very bones. Gently, the healer turned to face Fingon.

“He probably won’t know it,” she said. “It will have grown back at least a little by the time he’s well enough to know the difference.”

“But…”

Lalwende swallowed hard, her chest clenching in horror. The shame was unimaginable. The cutting of hair was so taboo in their culture that even trims were done in secret and those who carried them out maintained business by word of mouth only and in whispers. “Cutter-of-Hair” was an insult, and the act itself a punishment for only the gravest and direst of crimes. To shave some poor soul’s off _entirely_ …

“It will be months before he can get out of bed if he’s _lucky_ , longer than that before he’s seen again in public again if he ever wants to be. We won’t tell anyone, for his sake. We can keep it a secret that he lost his hair.”

“Alright,” Fingon said quietly, staring at the ground.

“We’ll let you select a member of the family to do it,” she said. Lalwende nodded. Only a member of the family could ever be charged with such an intimate act, as private as washing and preparing the dead for burial. However necessary, for any stranger, even a doctor to carry out such a personal violation would be utterly beyond reprehension.

“No Finno, I’ll do it,” said Nolofinwe, stepping forwards. “If only stop my son heroically volunteering and causing himself further distress. Just tell me what to do.”

“Very well then,” she said. With a pained smile of apology, she opened the door to lead Nolofinwe inside. Lalwende caught a glimpse of the bloody figure laid out across a bed inside and her heart ached. She rubbed her hands gently into Fingon’s quivering shoulders. The door was pulled shut, and Finno began to sob against her.

“Hush child,” she said, as she held him close, huddled beside him on the bench. “Hush…”

“Poor thing,” she could not help but say out loud. “The poor thing…”

 

...

 

 

A pile of neatly folded blankets in her arms, Lalwendë pushed open the door to her brother’s study.

“I – I told Itarille what happened,” she said, quietly.

Nolofinwe did not respond. She walked across the chamber, laid the blankets down gently on his desk. Nolofinwe did not look up.

“Donations from Arafinwë’s children, and a few blessed souls around the camp,” she continued.

Still not looking at her, Nolofinwe blankly said:

“That’s very generous of them, but we cannot accept this—“

“Believe me, I tried. But they said came here to fight Morgoth and could not allow themselves to turn their backs on one of his victims.”

“Very well then. Linen for bandages?”

“Next on my list,” she said. Her hands fell folded to her thighs.

She watched as Nolofinwe ran his fingers in and out of a candle, with the impatience he had had as a small boy.

“Well,” she said, bluntly. “What are we going to do with him, when— when they are done.”

Nolofinwe sighed, rose to his feet, extinguished the candle with a lick of his fingers.

“My chamber has the most efficient heating,” he said.

“Nolo, that would provoke an outcry!”

“What alternative do you suggest, Irime? The Hall? Where the children could see him? Doubtless enough of them already won’t sleep tonight, I wish we could have warned people…”

She leaned forward and embraced her brother, paused to rearrange the flaps of his bed robe and retie his undone sash.

“There,” she said, tying a firm knot in the band of silk, “Then have Finno’s bed brought to your room for him. I myself could not care less if I tried, but there are those who would react with fury if their King shared his bed with one of _them_. It is far too dangerous a gesture.”

“Very well then.”

“Why on earth do these things matter, you saw what they did to him…”

Lalwende turned around in shock. She had not noticed her nephew resting in a chair in the shadows at the back of the room. As Fingon moved into the weak light of the few candles and stood beside them, Lalwende reflected on how out of place he looked. It was the most domestic of scenes- early morning, a study lit with tapering clean-scented beeswax candles, and the affections of a brother and a sister. Standing between them thoroughly drenched in black congealing blood with a sword at his hip and light armour, his black braids clotted with gore, Findekano could hardly have seemed more out of place, as though excised he had been from another episode in life entirely and inlaid into this quiet scene of domesticity and sibling affection.

“Findekano—“

“He’s dying in there and you’re arguing over what people will think! Worrying about people seeing what happened to him when he LIVED it—“

“Findekano! Stop.”

Lalwende took him into her arms, It was utterly out of her character for her nephew to be dismissive of public image; that she knew for certain.

“Nephew listen. For a King to offer another the use of his bed is a gesture of royal forgiveness. You are too young to remember such things, but there are those in this camp who can. It is _far_ too provocative a gesture to risk.”

She embraced him, still damp blood from Fingon’s clothes soaking onto the skirt of her spotless gown.

“Listen. _Finno._ Your father and I are worrying about politics so you don’t have to, not because we do not care about your cousin. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

She stepped back.

“There now,” she said, patting her hands down her soiled dress. “His blood is on all three of us now, yes? That links us to him, and I promise you we care. We’re family, we knew him and that gives us reason to. It is one thing for us family to draw on memories from before and forgive, but for those to whom we are all only political figures…”

Findekano nodded and gulped.

“I understand,” he said, brushed the tears from his face with the back of his hand. His father laid his hands on his shoulders.

“Now,” he said. “There’s some buckwheat porridge and soup downstairs I had the servants put to warm for you—“

“I’m not hungry—“

“Finno, please. Spare me this one bit of worry and eat something. And it is not your fault or his, but you smell vile. Eat something, take a bath, get some rest before Maitimo has need of you in the morning.”

Quietly, he said:

“They are tending to Maitimo in the bathhouse, father.”

“Then use the lake. And be sure to burn those clothes afterwards, I’ll lend you some of mine for a few days while the seamstresses fix you some new ones. We’ll need to find a nightshirt for your poor cousin as well, I suppose. It will have to be Turno’s; no one else is tall enough. Never mind Finno, I’ll see to that.”

He leant forward and kissed his son’s forehead; Lalwende saw Finno’s shoulders quiver as he left the chamber. Nolofinwe returned to his desk and began absentmindedly shuffling papers.

“If anyone understands public image, my firstborn does. He must be in a terrible shock indeed to have forgotten that. So out of character…”

“He’s not the only one acting strangely, Nolo. You’re hiding something. What?”

“What do you think? When I last went in there, they told me his chances of surviving the next couple of days. They’re not good.”

He sighed rested his face on his hands.

“They’re fairly certain he’ll succumb to an infection in the next few days, and there’s precious little they can do about it.”

“Suffer the children…”

“Elenwe. Arco. This… _this atrocity_. And the Feanorians lost their littlest as well. How many more tiny graves, Nolo? How many are we going to lose?”

“They’re not children, Lalwende.”

“No. They’re not. But they’re the younger generation of this family, we’re all that’s left of the older and I’ll be damned if I can see them all as anything other than that.”

Memories of Finwe’s small army of grandchildren giggling and flinging peas at each other at the children’s table at family gatherings, playing in the gardens while the adults sipped coffee and nibbled sweets. And here they were, running kingdoms and armies and charging into doomed battles and parleys.

“Young fools,” she said, shaking her head.

“We’re family,” she said. “Vengeance be damned, so help me I will _grovel_ if it stops us burying another, do you understand?”

“Grovelling won’t do much good, I’m afraid. Hope and chicken broth and stitches maybe—“

“Don’t you dare tell me you do not care—“

“How dare you suggest that I do not? I just had to shave the head of my brother’s child while he very nearly bled to death beneath me and was crying out for his mother in agony, and all the while I was thinking this could have been my child. My little boy, my sons, Finno, Arco, Turno. And you dare suggest that I am not petrified?”

“I never dreamt… that even Melkor was capable of such cruelty.”

“No one did. Help us, no one did.”

“I think… I’m afraid, they’ll always be children to you and I, little sister. And I fear the pain that that is going to bring.”

“Nolo—“

She wrapped her arms around him.

“I’m going to go see that our nephew is receiving the attention he needs,” he said as he left to depart the room. “Irime?”

“What, Nolo?”

“Keep an eye on my son,” he said, kissed her forehead and left.

 

...

 

 

Fingon doused himself in the sheer, numbing cold of the lakewater, stood up gasping in shock at the sheer, breathless cold. The wind rushed against his face; shivering, he began to work the catches of dried blood from his hair, flipped his head upside down and dunked his braids in the water, again and again.

Swiftly, he stripped naked; ruined, bloody clothes hung on the surface of the lake in drowned tatters and the waters around him wavered crimson and black. The waterskin he had carried with him to the depths of hell bobbed innocently up and down in the waters and drifted away.

As he stripped off his breeches, he felt something hard and sharp in the pocket, pulled it to the surface.

The leather sheath of the dagger hung heavy in his hands.

He unsheathed it. The blade was ragged, scratched into a wreck against stone and flesh; the beautiful engraving Feanaro’s fingers had crafted clotted and caked with the blood of his firstborn son.

Fingon took the knife, and hurled it as far across the lake as he could muster in his exhaustion, a scream cutting from his throat as he hurled it into the depths.

It glinted red for an instant on Mithrim’s silver surface, and then it was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> End credits song, because I'm kind of a sap like that https://youtu.be/Ay80nO7xzSo


End file.
